Naval History Forums

For a long time, I thought the Hood was newer than PoW.

With regard to current interest, I'm pretty sure noone where I work is aware at all of the Sydney and the significance of her location except those I've told. I'm afraid this extends to the general public at large. Most people I try to talk to about naval battles in general are polite but disinterested.

Bgile:

Most people I try to talk to about naval battles in general are polite but disinterested.

1,000,000,000% RIGHT. This happens to me always. There is no one I can talk about this things, not a soul. There are people that believe that the most powerful warship in the inventory of WWII was... a destroyer!!! And that Bismarck and Yamato were some kind of.... destroyers

From time to time you can talk with someone but never to the extent we can do here, at this forum. Let´s say it again: THANKS JOSÉ FOR THIS WEBPAGE, FOR THE FORUM AND FOR BISMARCK.

Best regards

Bgile wrote:For a long time, I thought the Hood was newer than PoW.

Fast battlecruiser, easy mistake to make. Hood was not technologically obsolete as to be useless, it wasn't given the armour upgradings it was due, because of Budget cuts.

Bgile wrote:...... I'm pretty sure noone where I work is aware at all of the Sydney and the significance of her location except those I've told. I'm afraid this extends to the general public at large. Most people I try to talk to about naval battles in general are polite but disinterested.

Same in Britain, I wasn't thinking of the general public at large, but the more interested part of the public who do concern themselves with history and naval matters, and also the greater specialist media coverage of these matters.
As for the geneneral public - well there are schoolkids today who don't know who Churchill was.... and this was the point I was trying to make to Compass Platform when he (I assume CP is a he) said the kids he taught would not be interested in Flodden, I think the teaching profession should make them aware history is important.

Another point - as evidence of growing interest in Bismarck, just look at the growth and development of this website.

Karl Heidenreich wrote: ..ul. There are people that believe that the most powerful warship in the inventory of WWII was... a destroyer!!! And that Bismarck and Yamato were some kind of.... destroyers ...

There was a news article I saw recently which refered to one or more modern ships as "Battleships" I think they were actually DDs but may have been cruisers or frigates. Obviously the newsees didn't have the slightest idea. I've also seen Bradleys refered to as tanks very often. Amazing how pervasive ignorance can be. It's excusable in many but in a writer or reporter when it's a significant element of his report.....

Anybody else wants to tell us how did he come to be interested in the Bismarck?

lwd, Tiornu, Antonio Bonomi, tommy303? Just to name a few of the regular users here.

Was trying to remmember. It's been a long time.
I've pretty much always been interested in military history and naval history in particular. I suspect it was either the song or the movie. Although it may have been a segment of "Victory at Sea" which was on TV in my youth. Part of that may be where I grew up (Washington State) and the people I was around. My dad served in the Coast Guard during WWII on the Eastwind (he was a plank owner), one of his good friends from the office (and the father of a couple of my good friends) was the third one over the crest of Suribaci. Two other friends and coworkers of my dad had been on the Lexington during the battle of the Coral Sea (and hadn't met until they went to work in the same office). One of my uncles was a B-24 navigator and completed 30 combat missions in Europe while another also with the USAAF built airfields in China. Now they didn't talk about it all that much but there were constant reminders and it meant that I looked at quite a few of the adults I grew up around as not just people to look up to and respect but as true heros and gave the history a personal touch.

It has been a long time ago, but I believe I first became aware of Bismarck from a newsreel of her launching ceremony--probably one of Die deutsche Wochenschau or similar as shown in the cinema prior to the feature film. Interest renewed with the production of the British film, Sink the Bismarck, which for all its faults, I still enjoy watching. Since then of course, my interest has increased along with the ever growing pool of printed material. I recall in the 1950s and 1960s it was often difficult to find much in print at all, but fortunately that is no longer the case.

Hmmm...I guess about 40 years ago my Dad took me to visit the U.S.S. Missouri, and being an avid fan of all things Navy, I started scouring the elementary school library "Military History" section, and ran across a book (paperback) titled "The Sinking of the Bismarck"....The What?? I looked at the dramatic painting depicting the last minutes of the chase, read the book, and was hooked.

It would be nice if now, in light of all the information and film making technology available if someone would make a more accurate movie about the ship and crew.

Thanks for a very informative forum

Dave

With modern film making they really could do a good job on these. Some of the stuff I saw from the Yamato movie was really impressive.

I do not wish to seem redundant, but I was also one of those who first came to know of Bismarck through the famous Johnny Horton song. At that time, it was not an old song by any means, and with my parents being fans of Johnny we had his music spinning on the phonograph quite often.

Oddly enough, the tune didn't get me as much interested in Bismarck as it did Hood! Although they both figured prominently through my youth and well beyond, it was Hood that always held my greatest fascination and spurred my interest in European navies--something I have never let go.

It was not until I was middle-aged that the information explosion on the Internet brought much new material, so much in fact, that it revived my old hobby interests I had abandoned almost 30 years ago. Bismarck, and indeed many other KM ships, are once again prominent because of this Forum and the interest shown by its members.

FWIW,

Dan

lwd wrote:
My dad served in the Coast Guard during WWII on the Eastwind (he was a plank owner) ......

Plank owner??? Not sure I follow here.

Was his service in the Coastguard around the time Jap subs were operating off the coast of California?

Hillcrest wrote:It would be nice if now, in light of all the information and film making technology available if someone would make a more accurate movie about the ship and crew.

Hi Dave,

Welcome to the forum.

I think a film of some sorts will come, it is a matter of it being commercially viable. The key point is the angle such a film would take, and of whether that angle throws the film into fiction.

A plankowner is a member of the original crew. Eastwind commissioned on 3 Jun 1944.
Mrs Hildebrand was my 8th grade teacher. On the first day of classes, she told us we'd be getting grades based on the number of books we read that year. This was a problem because I was not inclined to indulge in reading. Well, I had to read something, so I happened upon a book about aircraft carriers that looked relatively painless. Turned out to be interesting, actually. So I spent the rest of the year reading books on similar topics. That's how I got my interest in warships.

RF wrote:

lwd wrote:
My dad served in the Coast Guard during WWII on the Eastwind (he was a plank owner) ......

Plank owner??? Not sure I follow here.

Was his service in the Coastguard around the time Jap subs were operating off the coast of California?

Here's a brief history of the Eastwind.
http://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/ ... d1944.html
She spent most of her WWWII carreer on "Greenland Patrol". Dad mentioned that they did drop some depth charges but those would have been vs suspected Uboats. He also said they never waited around long enough to see if anything came up so wasn't even sure they had real targets.